"Now, Cainy, shoulder your two, and off Good
morning, Mr. Boldwood." The shepherd lifted the
sixteen large legs and four small bodies he had himself
brought, and vanished with them in the direction of
the lambing field hard by -- their frames being now in a
sleek and hopeful state, pleasantly contrasting with their
death's-door plight of half an hour before.
Boldwood followed him a little way up the field,
hesitated, and turned back. He followed him again
with a last resolve, annihilating return. On approaching
the nook in which the fold was constructed, the farmer
drew out-his pocket-book, unfastened-it, and allowed it
to lie open on his hand. A letter was revealed -- Bath-
sheba's.
"I was going to ask you, Oak." he said, with unreal
carelessness, "if you know whose writing this is? "
Oak glanced into the book, and replied instantly,
with a flushed face, " Miss Everdene's."
Oak had coloured simply at the consciousness of
sounding her name. He now felt a strangely distressing
qualm from a new thought." The letter could of course
be no other than anonymous, or the inquiry would not
have been necessary.
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